Adaptability

Across the world, humans are living through a period of extraordinary change, with jobs lost, businesses closed, graduations cancelled, and weddings, moves, and vacations postponed. Familiar routines involving work, school, and exercise and weekend recreation have been tossed out the window.

Moving forward, there’s more uncertainty on the horizon. We don’t know when or if those jobs will come back, when schooling will return to normal, when we’ll be able to hug grandparents or see faraway friends and relatives. Many of us don’t know whether we’ll be able to pay the rent or the mortgage. Trauma and upheaval are coming at us from all sides, and no one can predict when it will let up.

It’s a lot of change to get used to all at once, and it’s not static. So, going forward, adaptability may be our best asset.

Adaptability can be defined as the ability to be creative and flexible in the face of new situations. Most of us have a tendency to shut down in the face of new things, but change, is like a rip current — if you swim against it, you’ll never reach the shore, therefore we need to ride change like a wave, “if you’re in a fall, a rise will follow.”

Adaptability is at times also explained as the capacity to cope with and capitalize on change, and the ability to recover when unforeseen events alter life`s plans.

Adaptability in the face of uncertainty is important because it allows us to see the possibilities in unanticipated change. Sure, the pandemic could be the apocalypse, or it could just be accelerating changes that were going to happen anyway — such as the shift to remote work.

As Muslims our belief was always that the future was never certain to begin with. So the idea that we believed everything was going to be okay was unreasonable. Unexpected shifts were always around the corner, whether in personal life or in business, whether we were prepared for it or not.

Accepting the uncertainty of the future means planning one step at a time, which is especially important when the landscape is changing so rapidly. We have to let go of the need to plan from A to Z, and learn to be okay with planning from A to B. After all, by the time we get to B, things already may have changed — just ask anyone who postponed their June vacation to December.

Adults are not the only ones having to do a lot of adapting lately. Children, who so thrive on routine, have had their worlds turned on end as well. Parents should create new, not-too-rigid structures that add some order to kids’ days without going overboard. Just as with adjusting to job changes, families should take small steps as they adapt to their new realities.

The pandemic has been a global experiment in discomfort. It hasn’t been easy on anyone, but learning to be comfortable with being uncomfortable is what will get us through it.